Stocking Up at Baby Sales

There has been a lot going on lately... What with home renos, knitting and sewing, and lots of growing-a-baby stuff.  I am having a hard time keeping up with posts!

Last weekend my sister came to town.  I took advantage for her love of shopping and off we went to a few local baby sales.  I live in a large-ish city, and these baby sales seem to happen pretty regularly through the spring, summer and fall.  Imagine a huge hall, filled with gently used toys, clothes and equipment, all at amazing prices.  It's heaven for an expecting mom, that's for sure.

The first sale we went to was the Ottawa Twins & More Spring Sale.

Here is a photo of the clothing madness:

It could be a little overwhelming, but my sister and I just got in there and dug through everything.

I came home with a bunch of great toys including this tiny love activity ball.  He is a sensory ball that vibrates and just looks really silly.  I laugh really hard every time I play with him.  I also found the Laugh and Learn Piggy Bank and Purse, in French nonetheless.  I was pretty excited about those finds.

We also brought home a boat load of clothing.  A good bit of the clothing in the pile below also came from the sale we went to the next day.  Pretty much everything was $1 per piece.  We got a lot of sleepers and onesies and some cute outfit pieces too.

The second sale was a community garage sale for moms.  Lots of moms in one place, selling stuff for very cheap.  We found lots of clothes and some great educational toys:

I love this alphabet set!  It was complete, which was a huge bonus!

Bringing home the (baby) stuff...

I wanted to show my method for bringing home lots of thrift store finds. These bags will be priceless at some of the big consignment sales that are coming up in our area. They are so big and help me tote around lots of stuff without juggling too much in my hands.

Yep. Those are IKEA bags, $1 each. What a bargain. They do fold up, sort of like a map, which can be tricky, but I did get them flat again for storage after using them.

Here's a view from the top

All the sweaters from my recent trip to Value Village fit in these bags, with lots of room to spare.

Trust me, they can hold a lot of stuff!

Have a great family day weekend (for my fellow Ontarians - I don't know if family day is a cross Canada holiday yet?)!  My parents are in town, so I won't be posting again until at least Tuesday next week.  Whatever you're up to, stay safe!

Thrifty Baby Find...

Still catching up with all my Value Village buys from last week...

Value Village had some good baby stuff, but I wasn't totally in the mood to scour the racks. I did find this gem though:

It's a lined cabled hoodie from Baby Gap.  It's 3-6 months, so it will be perfect for the fall and early winter next year.  I paid $3.00 for this.  (It looks barely worn!).

I think I have spoiled myself a little lately.  I can't stand the thought of paying full price for any baby clothes.  Right now I don't even like the idea of spending more than $1 or $2 on baby items!

Consignment Store Hunting & Gathering

I have the nesting bug.  I've had it for a very long time. 

I am knitting up a storm, and gathering together essential and not-so-essential baby stuff.

The past few weeks have been great for consignment store hunting and gathering.  Everyone is clearing out their fall and winter stock to make room for spring and summer stock.  It's the perfect time to stock up.

A few weeks ago I brought home a big pile of mostly gender-neutral onesies, pajamas and comfortable pants for baby.  I choose age appropriate sizes knowing that the baby will be 5 months old at Christmas.
Everything was 50 to 75% off, and I thought I did quite well for myself.  I only chose items that would be about $2 each or less.  It wasn't hard to find about 15 pieces that fit within those criteria.

Today, one of the local consignment stores announced that all the remaining fall and winter stuff was marked down to $1.  Everything!  $1! 

I headed over there first thing this morning (the first day of the sale) to see what I could track down.  I allowed myself to buy some less-gender neutral items, including some cute little girl pinafores. 

Mostly I went for things that are generally more expensive and I ended up with a whole lot of jean in my bag.  Baby jeans, jean pinafores, jean jackets.  Yep.  I splurged and bought a jean jacket for when our bébé is 0-3 months old.  How indulgent.  For $1, I can afford to be indulgent!

I love this little jean dress.  How chic!

I also got a few great sweaters (fairly gender neutral).  The Canada one is an Olympic Sweater from the Vancouver 2010 games.  I love the mittens, that also serve as pockets.  All the babies I know need pockets.

If we have a boy, I'll save the little dresses, or pass them on to someone else.  I think we're having a boy, but I don't want to jinx anything by saying it too much.  I don't really mind either way, just as long as whatever we have is healthy! 

Consignment stores are a great way to buy beautiful clothes on the cheap.  Next week is the semi-annual 50% off sale at Value Village.  I'm going to hit at least one store (maybe two!).  I haven't really looked at the baby stuff there much before, so I'm not sure how much of it will come home with me.  They are definitely not as picky as consignment stores, so I will have to watch out for stains on clothing (formula stains clothes!) and be a little more on my toes.

Kijiji Buys

I often troll kijiji for used kids stuff.  I can't buy many baby clothes yet (without knowing the gender, it's very hard anyways!), but toys, feeding supplies, etc. are fair game right now. 

I've been slowly growing my collection of fisher price roll-arounds and peek-a-boo blocks forever, and now I need to start getting some of the interactive toys that go with these amazing sensory toys.  I have a few, but there are many more out there that I want to acquire.

Anyways, this week I found some of the roll-arounds, I don't actually have too many of these.  The seller also had a lot of other cool stuff I picked up, so of course I grabbed these too!



Roll-Arounds $5

I can't even tell what this whole lot is...

Gymbo doll (the puppet), 3 Fisher Price Keys, Baby Einstein Rings, 2 Infantino Wind Chimes.  I think this whole group was around $10

I'm very excited about the taggies stacker and the Infantino piggy bank.  They look very cool. $12 for all

This little hand and foot rattle set is cute too.  I love bugs!  The larger item is a Lamaze Flutterbug.  Apparently the  Bug "flutters" when flower stem is pulled down. If you pull down on toy, it makes vibrating noises.  The wings crinkle. I think this lot was $5

I find the trick with kijiji (and other used sites) is to buy stuff you want to buy new anyways (duh!) but also to watch your area for deals.  If you have to drive 40 minutes each way to pick up a $7 toy, it's not really much of a deal now is it?  Make sure you barter a little.  I'm not very good at this, but asked for a deal since I was taking so much from one seller.  The listed price of all the items was about $50, and I'm getting it for $40.  There is also a small bead maze that I don't have a photo of. 

In this case, the seller was located about 5 minutes away from my chiropractor, who I was seeing anyways.  I made sure to arrange the pick up while I was in the general area. 

Of course, safetey is the most important thing!  Make sure you tell someone where you are going and when you are going.  I text my husband before and after a pickup so he knows I'm safe.  This is especially important now that it's not just me making a pickup!

I'm always looking for interactive toys, sensory toys, and toys I deem to be "smart".  I'd love to hear about your favourite toys so I can be on the look out for them in the future!

Christmas Wrap Up and Pregnancy Update

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas / Happy Holiday Season.  I have enjoyed a bit of a blogging break to visit with family and was finally able to share our amazing news with them!  I hope you have been enjoying the scheduled blog posts about trying to concieve.  This series will wrap up Thursday and then I will be able to post about my pregnancy experiences so far.

I have a post from every week of the pregnancy starting at week 4, and will post those every Tuesday and Thursday.  Hopefully I can get another blog post or two in every week as well, just to keep things current.  Please excuse me if things seem to be jumping around a bit in the pregnancy timeline.  I don't want to leave out all the exciting things that are happening, and I can't wait to have everyone caught up with me again.

This week we took advantage of boxing day sales and found our baby crib set. I have been scouring used websites for months now, but never found anything that was quite right. This week, we saw that the Bay had their Gluckstein Home baby crib sets on for 50% off.  We found one we had admired in the past and snatched it up very quickly.  The crib cost us $250 (CDN) and we got a large dresser unit for another $325. When I look online, most used cribs cost at least $250, so I think we got a great price.

Both are to be delivered tomorrow and Alain and I are very excited to get them set up.

Here are photos of the crib and dresser in the store:

It's a little early to make such a big baby purchase.  We definitely reeled a bit, even though we know we got everything at a great price.  Ah well, a deal is a deal and we will need it eventually.